a Clown and his Lady
by for that smile
Summary: A series of short themed drabbles for Break and Sharon. o4 is up; but do be warned about large spoilers for Retrace 42.
1. fairy tales

**o1. Fairy Tales**

When she was a child she heard only the echoes and stray whispers of what romance might have been. Listening quietly around corners, she'd hold her breath to steal bits of whatever stories she could-- aristocrats swooning over glossy skinned men setting them free from their petty lives and loveless marriages, or young maids in the halls sighing for a prince with a glass slipper who'd only ever met them in dreams.

Fifteen years blink by and her face has stopped changing for good, but her heart is wiser and wearier and knows that the gilded pages of fairy tale loves and happily-ever-afters she shows Alice are just as contrived as salvation by harlequin novel heroes or inconvenient slippers. She realizes now that love, for her, is a cruel reality found through ten years of impassive amethyst eyes watching flaxen-haired princes and dukes flaunt their prospects and pull roses from their sleeves to no avail. She'd come to loath them all, after a decade—for not one yet could clear her thoughts of a ragged clown who had never let any prospect shine though his garnet eye or roses sprout from his palm, and she herself still couldn't explain how such a man had stolen her heart like another pastel from her candy dish without ever seeming to know it.

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A/N: I haven't been able to write for a while now, so I'm making a slow and unskilled attempt at starting up again. Concrit and comments are loved.

Disclaimer: Pandora Hearts and its lovely characters belong to Mochizuki Jun.


	2. ridicule

**o2. Ridicule**

Sitting in the back of carriage, Sharon wondered if Break even knew how painful he made things for her when he began playing these games. He grinned and winked and played sultry smiles, pantomiming each one of the young Vessalius heir's less-than-subtle flirtations before throwing his head back in a fit of mirth. He turned his head back to face his young charge, his face quickly regaining its own air of inscrutable deviance.

"Still…" he added slyly, watching the girl's flushed features with interest, "he certainly did fit milady's fetish for young boys."

Sharon's face was a mad blur of scarlet now as she turned it vehemently away from her companion.  
"Please don't say such imprudent things, Break…" she mumbled, and the jester's brow creased slightly at the tone of desperation and dejection that escaped through her indignation.

Ah. So that's how it was.


	3. lotus petals

**o3. Lotus Petals**

He should have been almost seventy years old, and for all of the grief and pain and sin that had tainted his 24 year old body and 39 year old mind, he had perfectly rationalized accepting the age that he should have been as what he truly was. The only complication was _her_.

She was 13—no, it was 23 now, wasn't it?—with all of the daintiness and sweetness of her frozen child's face and all of the knowledge and needs of the adult she was cursed never to grow into, and whatever it was that he could have been—her brother, her uncle, her _grandfather_—it completely unbefitting of him to remain by her side as he did.

And now is worst of all, with her small child's fingers deftly tracing deceit and desire down his back and clasping hands that she knows are stained with the blood of 116 people— he wears his sleeves long trying to forget the 117th— and making him want so desperately to repress what he feels for them and acknowledge the one person who is beside him now. He's known Sharon's feelings for years and he's done everything he can to be family to her, to playfully redirect her affections to Oz or Liam or _anyone_ who might save her from the inevitable heartbreak of feeling for someone who was already far too old and impure and broken for her.

But he's failed and now he's shown just how much, with Sharon laying soft palms on his cheek and those tiny fingers gently lacing through his hair and luring his face downward. Amaranthine eyes sparkling with tears reach and curl tepid spirals of haze around his senses, and now each gossamer touch wipes another year from his count and _forces_ him to see her as an adult.

She seals their lips once and presses lotus petals into his mouth.

For the first time in his life Break understands what it must feel like to be drunk, though he's never been so completely sobered. He relaxes his back against the wall and pulls Sharon closer.

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A/N: Amaranthine means both "red-purple" and "eternal"/"endless", which I thought was quite fitting, in some strange way. Not sure yet how I feel about this piece, though.


	4. blind

**o4. blind**

He didn't have to see Sharon's face to know exactly how she looked at that moment—first striking relentlessly with her harisen and screaming at his recklessness until tears and temper had wiped any semblance of her status from that beautiful porcelain face. Sanguine rose leaves her cheeks for an angry saline mess and before long she's overdone it and she's crying and choking until impact grows ever gentler and each punishment becomes nothing more than a quivering tap timed to a quiet whimper. Insults and reprimands roll with the tears until both die into silence on her breath, and then she's in his arms and the sobbing is revived in a full blown cascade against his chest. He pulls her close and buries his face in her hair, planting kiss after kiss on honeyed silk and wishing each one could have sufficed as an answer for her.

Through the strangled sobs the interrogation never stops.

"Why did you go alone? Why do you always put yourself in these dangerous situations?! Why do you never tell me anything?! It's so scary, and… and… Even though I've tried so hard to be there for you… to reach out to you…"

She has.

And it's so much harder to keep her in the dark now that he knows exactly what the dark feels like.

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A/N: I rather dislike my writing, but oh well. After that plot development on MochiJun's part I felt like giving it a try.


End file.
